Died Young, Stayed Pretty

Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a candid look at the strikingly obscene, brazenly blasphemous and often quite beautiful world of the underground network of music gig poster artists. Eileen Yaghoobian journeys through North America to reveal a new breed of subculturists who've set out to destroy the mainstream through their controversial and intensely visceral design work promoting Radiohead, Nick Cave, White Stripes, Black Keys, Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Marilyn Manson, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Bob Dylan, and thousands of others. The film gives us intimate look at some of the giants of this modern subculture. Outside of their own circle, they’re virtually unknown. But within their ranks they make up an army of bareknuckle brawlers. Under the guise of advertising for rock shows, these unheralded masters of the silkscreen and Xerox machine carry on public discourses arguing the aesthetic merits of octopus imagery and hairy 70s porn stars. They’ve created their ownvisual language for describing the spotty underbelly of western civilization and they're not shy about throwing it in the face of polite society while safely treading under the radar. Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivisectionists of America’s morbidly obese consumer culture. With a top-notch indie soundtrack by Mark Greenberg, the film was featured as an official selection of the 2009 SXSW Film Festival and Comic-Con International.